Nicotine, White Spots and Weaknesses

I recently started smoking again. That was a brilliant move on my part. It’s okay to congratulate me. Go ahead. I feel like a newcomer at an AA meeting admitting my dirty little secret. I used to smoke in college, back when Joe Camel was a sex symbol draped across ads and posters wearing a speedo. We thought he was sexy with his swollen abs and massive humps. I have to hand it to advertisers who can make girls lust over a dusty, spitting desert mammal used for transportation purposes. I successfully kicked the habit upon growing up and entering the real world.

I didn’t start back because I was stressed out, or because of great sex, or even because of peer pressure. I did it to preserve the appearance of my kitchen table….because in case you didn’t know, nicotine is better for wood than Murphy’s Oil Soap or Pledge. It’s a little secret that the government is trying to keep you from finding out. Yeah, they preach cancer, emphysema and heart disease, but they don’t tell you about the heavenly shine that cigarette ashes properly applied can bring out in your wood furniture. So, here’s how it happened, and let me tell you, I’m not proud if this. But for some things, like furniture refinishing, you have to make sacrifices and rearrange your priorities. I have this beautiful antique farm table. Don’t be jealous. I’m not bragging. It’s the only piece of furniture I own that didn’t come from Big Lots or a garage sale, or a garage sale of Big Lots furniture. Oh, I also have a couch set that came from Bargain Kuntry Furniture Liquidators. This store had 27 going out of business sales, before it actually WENT out of business. I guess they cried wolf one too many times and people didn’t buy it. (pun intended) Anyway, this farm table is made from some gorgeous, exotic wood from a tree that’s probably now extinct. The last one was chopped down to build a condo development. Thanks, Curry!

Now my gorgeous table, being of such rare wood doesn’t seem to hold up to anything. It’s completely high maintenance. You can’t set anything down on it that’s too hot, cold, wet, spicy, or made with Spam as the main ingredient. If you even breathe too hard around it, it’ll dull the finish.

But, the biggest problem of all was white spots. Have you ever had a white ring on a table? Yeah, they’re hard to remove. So, one day, my son Andrew came in from swimming and threw his pool towel down on the table. As soon as I came in, saw the towel that was almost dry, and yanked it down, there was a huge white spot hovering right in the center, where the main dish would sit, if I ever cooked. I’m talking about a fluffy cumulous cloud that had settled into the wood grain, unpacked its bags and was lounging with a margarita and the channel changer. It wasn’t going ANYWHERE. No flower arrangement or placemat could cover it. It looked like one of those splotches picked up by Ghost Hunters EVP. I pulled out the oil soap and the scratch cover and the whole nine yards. Nothing touched it. So, being a pretty resourceful gal, I decided I was NOT going to be defeated by this wood grain stain. I would go to any legal length to remove it.

I got in my car, headed to the library and set up shop in the wood furniture resource section. After thumbing through 33 books, written by sixty something year old men wearing flannel shirts and thick plastic rimmed glasses from the early eighties (we’re talking Bob Vila meets Clark W. Griswold.) I found the right book. Why is it that we trust men wearing flannel to know a thing or two about do it yourself projects? As if every wood working apprentice learns the dress code early by their mentor reprimanding them “Son, you cain’t sand that coffee table wearing a cotton t-shirt!” Get your flannel on, boy. Take pride in your work!

I chose a book that has an entire chapter dedicated to cleaning those tough white spots out of wood. Shockingly enough, I read that the best remedy is to mix cigarette ashes with vegetable oil or mayonnaise. Not fireplace ashes, or cremation ashes, or burnt sacrifice ashes or burn the evidence ashes. Cigarette ashes! I had to read it twice to make sure I wasn’t just having nicotine induced delusions revisited from 15 years ago. But, it said it right there in black and white, cigarette ashes made into a paste with vegetable oil, and an adequate amount of scrubbing would remove the stain. You wouldn’t want to use it in your deviled eggs or cole slaw, but for white stains, it was the perfect recipe. I had mayonnaise and I had vegetable oil, but I didn’t seem to have any full ash trays lying around my kitchen, or any room in my house for that matter. I don’t have any friends who smoke. I don’t even have any enemies who smoke. And it's not like you can just run to Kroger and purchase a bag of cigarette ashes. I thought about driving down to a bar in my soccer mom SUV with my two small children strapped into their car seats and asking Thelma, the cocktail waitress for the contents of a few ashtrays, but decided against it. I thought about trying to discreetly empty the contents one of those cigarette extinguisher towers outside Wal-Mart into my purse. But those things are heavier than they look and I couldn’t even lift it over my head. So, I did what any dedicated owner of ONE nice piece of furniture would do, I marched into Wal-Mart with my two boys, filled the buggy with household necessities and then ever so modestly slunk to the only checkout that sells cigarettes. For an image conscious, Christian mother, this is the equivalent of taking your kids into the porn section of a movie store. When it was my turn to check out, I bowed my head low and whispered to the cashier “I need some cigarettes.” ‘What kind,” asked the cashier through the three teeth remaining in her mouth. “Oh any kind will do, I guess. I don't know anything about them,” I said with all the feigned innocence of a woman buying condoms. She gave me an impatient roll of the eyes; there were seven people having nic fits in line behind me. So, I blurted out “MARLBORO MENTHOL LIGHT 100’s IN A BOX, NOT A SOFT PACK, please, but I can assure you as a healthy mom who cares about my children and the environment, these are NOT for me. You see I have this table……” “Here ya go,” the cashier interrupted in a voice ravaged enough to frighten even Joe Camel as she tossed the cigs at me in full view of my impressionable children. I grabbed the goods and shoved them into my purse as if hurrying to conceal a weapon. (Well, they sort of are a weapon, if you want to get technical about it).

All the way home, I lectured Andrew and Jack about the perils of smoking, assuring them that Mommy wasn’t a smoker, would never be a smoker and was just buying this pack to get enough ashes to try this ridiculous stain removal routine. I told them all about lung cancer, and death rates and 11 minutes off your life with every cigarette and bad breath and phlegm and wrinkles and smokers being socially undesirable. I explained the Marlboro purchase as a martyrous act to keep from having to buy a new kitchen table. Secretly, though, I was looking forward to my project. A devil had already materialized on my left shoulder urging me to light up as soon as the groceries were safely in the cupboard and Andrew and Jack safely in front of SpongeBob. Where was the angel on the right? Was it his day off? Was he at a shoulder angel’s union meeting? Or was I just ignoring him?

Sure enough, I followed the shoulder devil’s advice, carefully saving every ash in my stain removal cup. It did occur to me that I could light the cigarettes and just let them burn down to the butt. But I extinguished that thought the moment it arose. The first week, I smoked only one a day, diligently keeping my kitchen table’s purpose in mind. By Sunday, I had enough ashes to work with. So, I made the paste, cleaned the table; and the spot for the most part, disappeared just as Flannel Bob Vila said it would. But what to do with the leftover smokes? I couldn’t just throw them away! That’d be wasteful! And there are starving children in Bangladesh who would love to pick up a life threatening habit. It would only be right for me to finish what I’d started. I’m a big believer in finishing what I start. It’s a sign of determination and moral character.

When the pack was finally done, I vowed NO MORE, unless another white spot should appear. But then, by the next Saturday, a bad case of PMS hit that only a cigarette (or 20) could remedy. For the most part, I was smoking only under the cover of night, or when the boys were at friends’ houses. They’ve done a lot of visiting lately.

After Pack Number Two was empty, I once again shook my fist in the air Scarlett O’Hara style and said “never again, unless a white spot!” But then, I started feeling sorry for myself because my husband was out of town on an extended business trip. Being a single mom would be much more tolerable if I had a couple of cigarettes, plus 18 more. I’m now in the middle of that pack. Number Three. I should go and throw them out right now. I’m feeling powerful. I think I can do it. My mouth tastes like a cesspool. My right hand stinks. I think it’s time to flush this habit, white spots or not. My shoulder angel is applauding me like a motivational speaker spouting affirmations, while its devil counterpart warns “You’ll just be buying another pack next week. Why waste these?”

I can do this. I’m strong. I don’t want to smell like an AA meeting forever. I’ll kick this habit. I WILL. Again.

Announcer voice comes on: "Can Angela throw out her smokes? Tune in tomorrow and find out."

Maniacal Environmentalist Sister Deflates Spirit of Easter.

Yesterday we hosted my parents and my sister's family for Easter at my house. Next year I'll remember to book the Dr. Phil studios for any holiday event where Pamela (my sister) and I have to share the same room. We might as well make a few bucks on the dysfunctional family talk show circuit if we're going to endure the hemorroidic discomfort of each other's presence. I'd rather suffer through childbirth labor, paper cuts and Britney Spears' new CD than have Pamela's passive/aggressive, hypocritical, manipulative, hyper judgemental, wet blanket presona upon me. I'd rather have a poison ivy flare up in my nether regions than have to put up with her psychosis.

Better than the Dr. Phil show, I could just sell tickets so curious people can come and watch the reality show that is my family. If I sell enough, I may be able to get the breast augmentation I've been saving up for. Perhaps I could have both right and left done at the same time, rather than have the procedure done as I can afford it. Left, then a couple of years later, the right one. (You have to know I'm kidding, but the prospect of it brings me a laugh) But I digress.

If you don't know Pamela and haven't fallen victim to my rantings before, let's just say something went wrong inside her brain, somewhere between her being born and her freshman year at UGA. We haven't exactly been able to pinpoint it. She's always been the kind of person who morphed into whoever her boyfriend, best friend, roommate or favorite professor was. Have you ever known someone who adopted all the habits and preferences of the people who they spent time with? This is my sister. This small town Wrightsville raised girl has been everything from an Orthodox Jew to a potato farmer from Idaho, to a Buddhist, to a rabid dumpster diving recycler who believes that the world's salvation hinges on that one water bottle lodged in the bottom of my kitchen trashcan that could be born again as a spatula. She'd ruin our Easter for the life of that water bottle. And everyone in the world who isn't just like her, doesn't subscribe to her beliefs is WRONG. She spends every waking hour trying to convince us to become vegetarians and grow all of our own food, maintain a compost pile fed by our own personal waste and relinquish all personal belongings that weren't purchased at Good Will or foraged out of a neighbor's garbage bin. I think she's part raccoon. She refuses to wear clothing that was produced in a factory overseas, unless it's at least 20 years out of style. And worst yet, she wears black tights on Easter Sunday. Way to go, Goth Girl.

During our last holiday, when I pulled the roast beef out of the oven, Pamela, in a hushed tone said to Tom her brainwashed 8 year old, "see that poor dead cow over there? It was murdered." Tears welled up in his eyes. When I cooked bacon in the microwave on paper towels, she again wondered aloud to no one in particular, how many trees died so that I could sop up the juice of dead animals in a brain cell killing appliance. She goes through holiday buffet lines renouncing all meat and anything seasoned with meat, even bullion cubes. She questions where the asparagus, peas and strawberries were grown. Apparently Chile is not an acceptable answer. She wonders aloud (again) whether the lettuce is certified organic. And I have to restrain myself from bitch slapping her with my au jus stained pot holder (which was probably produced in a Cambodian sweat shop by a six year old) As we all sit down to eat, I notice that the only items on Pamela's plate are the ones she, herself contributed. I'm not offended. Whatever. I wouldn't eat her unseasoned grass clippings and tree roots either. All's fair in love and war.

Yesterday, as a clean up saving step, I set the kids' table in paper plates and cups, not thinking about Pamela's aversion to such landfill clogging items. When I entered the room again, she was resetting the table with glass items. This is a woman who says she's not comfortable getting her own glass of water at my house, but she can reset the table?

Honestly, her principles wouldn't bother me if she didn't follow me around judging and correcting everything I do. It offends me when she goes through my garbage can animatedly retreiving neglected cans and bottles in front of other guests, and makes a production of talking to them as if she's just rescued them from nameless attrocities. Then she looks up at me as if I'm an ignorant, inbred, cold hearted container killer.

When I'm washing dishes, she walks across the room, flips off the water in a huff, reminding me that North Georgia has been in a drought for years. Lake Lanier is suffering because of my consumption. I'm afraid to do anything in my own house.

I suppose any sane person would wonder why I put myself through this each holiday. The answer is GUILT. Guilt that my mom ladles out like extra mushroom gravy over Mahatma rice. "It's just awful that our family isn't close like other families. Blood is thicker than water and Pamela is the only sibling you have. When Daddy and I are gone, you'll have only each other. Please try for our sake. It's just a few times a year." My mom's speeches are amazingly effective at leading me back into another holiday with the Pamela: Hugger of Trees, Offender of Sisters. I used to have another sibling, who I adored. He was normal and funny and laid back and playful. His name was Rob. I guess God adored him too. So much that he wanted him in Heaven with him. I won't dwell on that because even after 15 years, thinking about it is like being punched in the heart.

Okay, I have a kitchen to clean with products that aren't certified green. I must get on with the day. I've ranted enough, and consequently I feel better. Writing does that for me, like a good laxative.

DISCLAIMER: Ok, yes, I know there are two sides to every story. Yes, I know I'm not perfect either and probably contribute some to this sisterhood gone wrong. But, let's remember that this is MY blog and unlike FOX News, I haven't taken an oath to be fair and balanced. But I vow that all accounts in this blog entry are true.